My sister said that yardwork makes her hate nature. I agree. I worked for my dad, a landscaper, for a while and he planted all sorts of weird shrubbery around the house that continues to grow and annoy me. When he was alive he used to hate it when I started hacking on the plant life, saying I had no skills. He was right, but someone needed to trim the jungle back.

The backyard continues to be a mess, but that doesn’t really give my neighbor the right to clean the ivy off his fence and then just leave it piled up back there. I went to ask him if he wanted me to take care of it. He wasn’t there and his wife said he’d come over and talk to me. Of course, he did not. It’s yard debris pickup tomorrow morning, so I put as much as I could fit into our garbage can. I figure he may or may not clean up the mess. If he doesn’t, that just means I’ll have to fill up the garbage can every other week, or get a friend with a pickup truck to help me. No biggie either way. I thought he liked the ivy, so I wasn’t poisoning it with the vengeance it deserved. Better living through chemistry!